Daily Archives: August 4, 2009

Hey, I’m no purist. I’ve got bills to pay. After I walked away from my Miami reporting gig, as I’ve shared here, I tried a bunch of things to bring home the proverbial bacon.

Just the other day, I found myself back at the anchor desk, which felt familiar, but I was in a warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I was being attacked by zombies. That was pretty different. (Watch CollegeHumor.com for that one soon)

So I’m hardly one to judge at the news former Houston reporter Cynthia Hunt will be back on the air in Texas this week–as a contestant on the reality dating show “Holidate,” which, according to the Houston Chronicle‘s Lana Berkowitz, is a new show that takes women from different cities and swaps them, letting each test the other’s dating pool for a match.

Hunt, a former KTRK and KPRC reporter, told the Chron “I came to Houston and started reporting at Channel 13, I was the youngest reporter on the air at 25. Now I’m 38! I can’t believe I’m still single.”

In a promo for the SoapNet show, Cynthia is a little more pithy: “There’s been no sex in this city for a while,” she says.

Now from what I’ve learned of dating and marriage via reality television, this is an excellent path to a lasting, loving relationship. And a paycheck.

We may not be exactly beloved by the community at large, but damn are we journalists resourceful, especially when the mortgage has got to be paid.

A group of laid off Los Angeles Times journalists has banded together to create The Journalism Shop, a collection of stellar reporters left on the beach by cutbacks and buyouts who want just one thing: to work. “The Los Angeles Times’ loss can be your gain,” the site’s ‘About Us’ reads. “Our interests range from freelance magazine journalism to book writing, deep project research to report design and writing. We encourage you to tap into our vast reservoir of experience and skill to bring to your own projects the caliber of journalism that helped make the Los Angeles Times one of the nation’s top newspapers.”

Award-winning journalists hanging out a shingle and saying, simply, “hire us.” It says a lot about where we are as an industry. A similar site, ProPhotographyNetwork, offers the same services, or as Matt Randall says there, “We will shoot anything, anywhere, for anyone.”

Do local television types want or need to do the same? Are we on camera types satisfied with the work our agents are doing? Would a “TelevisionProducersCollective” help? These are the kinds of ideas we can talk about at LocalNewser’s companion site, where I hope to offer peer coaching and mentoring to journalists who could benefit from a little guidance given the crazy world we’re working–or, like the ex-Timesers, not working–in.